


Effects

by d__T



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Background Character Death, Current Events, Guns, PTSD, friends looking out for friends, is it possible to write a fix it for real life, this is unbetad and I never want to see or hear from it or my feelings ever again
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 23:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7194395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/d__T/pseuds/d__T
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky goes to a club, and tells himself everything is going to be fine. Nothing is fine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Effects

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is based around the Pulse Orlando shooting. I haven’t made it explicitly clear that they’re at a gay club, or that Bucky and Clint are bisexual af. This fic doesn’t end happy.
> 
> I have stolen 100% of my characterization from [Critical Feline Mass](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/3642638), although this occurs before the events of those stories and I highly recommend reading reading them to clear your head of the suffering.

Clint brought Bucky to clubs, sometimes, while they were deployed. At least, on missions that went to cities large enough to have more than a handful of shitty bars and gave them enough time. There, Clint showed him how to let the over-loud music drown out his mind, and how to let all the power and control he held in his body go to something as useless as dancing.

Before, he’d gone to clubs, hooked up with the pretty men and women. But he’d never understood the ones who danced alone, or without touching their partners. He’d watched them, sure, but never understood.

Bucky got good at it, and good at slipping out from under hands that want to know that lean body. Then, Clint was the only one permitted to touch him and it led to some nights. It was hard for them to not attract attention, but memory is a slippery thing in night clubs.

And that was while they were away. The euphemism rests uneasy in his mind and on his tongue, but it is still the one he uses.

Now, Clint is Natasha’s to dance with, and Bucky goes with them. Comfortable and raucous with his friends, and only sometimes touchable by strangers. They all know how it is, to be unable to hide from demons in the dark.

This time, as he’s getting ready, he knows he’s not steady. Just off kilter, he doesn’t  _ want _ to go, but he knows seeing Clint will help him. He’s ready to escape his own damaged mind and body for as long as it takes him to wear his body out from dancing. He’s looking forward to the laugh and punch from Clint when he’s once again told his smudged out eyeliner and deliberately ragged shirt and jacket and fitted jeans is “garbage sniper chic” and Nat’s subtle smirk when he tells Clint to meet him on the range, asshole.

He dresses like this, hair grown out and messy clothing because it blunts the hard look being a weapon gave him, makes him feel like he could, someday, be one of the people who doesn’t flinch into battle awareness when there’s a gunshot sound effect in the music at the club. Or whenever someone drops something, really. 

He tells himself that he doesn’t need it, as he clips the the pistol into the back of his jeans,  _ it will be fine _ . The weight is comforting to him, and the fall of his loose shirt and jacket cover it. He’s never drawn it, not even in reflex. He’s ready to go.

Clint and Natasha meet up with Bucky outside of the club, a flurry of texts making it happen. Clint whistles at him as he approaches, and Bucky smiles back at him. He sees though, the silver arrow necklace that Clint wears on fragile days now. It’s a gift from Nat, one of her subtle toys- it pulls apart to yield a poisoned needle. Natasha, of course, has a matching one.

“C’mon, I’m ready to not be me for a while.”

“Amen to that.”

They head on in- this is a small club, no frisking at the door, just a burly man checking ID for age. They’re regulars, and they chatter with him a little before he waves them on in.

There is music that includes gunshot sound effects, sometimes. Bucky used to startle, but he’s gotten better. Trained himself to know that the sound effects don’t sound real. He  _ knows _ . Though as much as he wants to, he still can’t close his eyes like the dancers that go into trances. Some part of him is always, needfully alert to his friends even though he knows they can take care of themselves.

The first shot, he tells himself. Sound effect. It has to be. His body calls him a liar, and instinct carries him out of the crowd and into the darkest shadow along the wall. Edging along towards the lip of the bar, he sees the crowd bowing away from the door, the doorman on the floor, and a man pointing an automatic weapon just barely over the crowd.. He sees Natasha pulling Clint, who signs at him “crowd control” and “called” and Bucky flashes him acknowledgement.

For a moment, he wants to run with the crowd.

Then he steps, chair table bar kicks a glass out of his way and gets his sight lines in his head before crouching down again. He pulls the pistol from its holster, checks it, and stands up again. Someone in the crowd is down, the panic is fully set. Someone sees him swing the pistol up and screams at him and he can’t pay attention to that.

Aim. fire. Tock. Tock. Tock.

He exhales, holsters the pistol, and kicks hands off his legs. He jumps down from the bar, shoving his way through the crowd towards the downed attacker, his strength spinning people out of his way. The man sees Bucky from down on the floor and tries to pull a pistol from inside his shirt but the shots Bucky put through his shoulders hinder him. Bucky encourages the man to stop by grinding his boot into one of the shoulder wounds, and distantly contemplates his missed shot- higher through the man’s abdomen than he intended to place it.

And then there’s police arrived; shouting and bullhorns and armor and simultaneously someone telling him he’s the hero the people need and someone trying to arrest him and he can’t. He twists out of their hands, takes a step, and falls to the sidewalk.

Everything slurs around him, feet rushing towards him, he can’t hear anything now, it’s all too loud. Rolled up against the curb, he stares blankly until an EMT figures it out and starts shooing people away and Clint and Nat show up out of practically thin air and nothing’s okay but at least he still has them.

They sit with him, Clint at his back and Nat beside him, and shoo off reporters until the police bring their questions around. Bucky’s report is concise and hollow toned and then they let Nat and Clint take him home.


End file.
